White Phase

Rich has been trying to keep my mind off my boy at basic training so we have been doing a few weekend projects. Messy, exhausting, lots of measuring, lots of up and down a ladder, lots of broken fingernails, all to keep our minds off the fact that we miss Garret. I follow his battalion's Facebook page and knew that they would get to call home again on Sunday. Rich and I were in the middle of tiling both bathrooms, covered head to toe in grout but made sure we had our phones nearby every second of the day. From the time we got up until we finally sat down last night and my phone rang and it said "Gib"! I tried to fire as many questions as I could at him and he kind of answered and after 30 seconds said "Is Dad there?" so he talked for about 30 more seconds with Rich and then said he had just hung up with Kayla and was going to call her back and he only had a couple minutes left to do that. We just looked at each other. I am sure he thinks we are fine just going through life as usual and that he needs to talk to Kayla more, but I will go on record and say I vote for equal  air time. Some things don't translate well in a letter and I do have a policy of not getting too involved in my grown-up kid's relationships but I did have a few things swirling around in my head. I will keep them in my head. Things are better that way.

He did say he is glad to move onto White Phase and that is skill development, self-discipline and team building, marksmanship training, and hand grenades. He is loving the marksmanship training and he has a M4 which apparently is a big deal and super cool.

What I do remember is that before he left for basic training he had some online training to take and I sat with him for a few of them. One scenario was what to do if another soldier tries to throw a grenade and it doesn't go far enough. These are the things that keep me up at night.